--The Dhammapada, Chapter 16: Transient Pleasures"

The key word here is "clinging" and not "pleasure".  When people read a lot of the Pali sutras -- the really early Buddhist teachings -- they can sometimes develop the misunderstanding that pleasure, in and of itself, is to be avoided.  But pleasure is just pleasure.  It's our clinging that's the issue; that gives us difficulties.  So it's not that we don't enjoy anything, but actually that we learn to not be so stuck on our preference for coffee that we can't enjoy tea, for example.  So this points not to a lack of enjoyment, but to full enjoyment that doesn't really depend on our preferences being continually satisfied.

The earliest Buddhist monastics were homeless, living in the forests and begging in the towns.  They'd each have one bowl that they'd take from house to house, and laypeople would offer them rice or vegetables.  Or sometimes offer them nothing.  Or sometimes even insult them.  And the historical Buddha, Shakyamuni, told the monks and nuns that they weren't only to visit their friends' houses, or rich people's houses.  They had to visit each house indiscriminately, whether that house was known for offering the finest rice or a string of expletives.  And when the alms-round was finished, the monks and nuns would return to the monastic community with their bowl, however full or empty, and they'd pool all the food and share it with each other.  This way of begging wasn't just practical.  These monastics were also learning togetherness and non-attachment.  And they were learning to be grateful for whatever found its way into their bowls.

The first time [former Still Point Abbot] Ango and I went around Korea, we stayed at monasteries and temples, and it was amazing how different the food was from one place to the next.  We'd stay somewhere like Tongdosa and the food was just terrible.  And the next day we'd hop a mountain range and stay at Haeinsa and have the most delicious food of our lives.  Some places I'd wonder which was older, me or the soup, and some other places I'd wonder whether a greedy second helping would be too great a breach of temple etiquette. 

But here's the thing:  whether you're at Tongdosa or Haeinsa, the monks in both places bow to their food in exactly the same way.  And as you travel like that, wherever you find yourself, whatever the food, you bow in exactly the same way, too.  You don't get to show up with with a couple Snickers bars or even a fresh bunch of kale in case the food sucks.  You eat what everyone else eats.  And you bow to it, whatever it is.  (And actually, travelling around like that, walking so much and everything, you're so hungry by the time you eat that bowing gratefully to crappy food is really pretty easy.  Maybe most of us are a little too spoiled by the four supermarkets down the street these days.)

When this chapter of the Dhammapada speaks of those who transcend the bonds of sensuous delight, it doesn't refer to those who get to Haeinsa and purposely don't enjoy the food.  What it actually means is that we enjoy the good food of Haeinsa without needing such good food next time.  In other words, we also very much learn to enjoy the food over at Tongdosa, too.  When Zen teacher Brad Warner recently visited Still Point, he put the experience of this very interestingly (and this is the closest my memory comes to whatever it is he actually said):   Isn't it cool to experience how much this sucks?  Isn't it wonderful to watch my aversion to this situation?  Ajahn Chah used to call this "Not being so attached to our moods."  And actually, in a fundamental way, all of Dharma practice is really the practice of not being so attached to our moods.

One tried and true, very basic way of working with this kind of gratitude and non-attachment is to take up the practice of the precepts, either formally in a ceremony like the one at Still Point in May, or even "informally" just to take them as practices.  It's often pointed out that the Buddhist precepts are not commandments, but more like a compass.  So instead of being in the woods (a traditional Buddhist metaphor) and always having to guess, should I go this way or that?, we can reference this compass.  One typical explanation of their fluid nature has to do with the precept on not lying:  If we see a rabbit run by and a hunting party soon after approaches and asks where the rabbit went, to point them in the wrong direction is, technically, to break this precept.  But more accurately, we've adhered to the spirit of the precepts in saving the rabbit's life.  Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh calls the precepts "mindfulness trainings", which conveys, I think, the way they actually function in our lives. 

But it's maybe precisely because of their fluidity, precisely because they're not fixed absolutes, that people at different times in Zen's history have claimed that they're secondary to formally sitting in Zen meditation; that Zen masters don't really even need them.  And if you look at the history of Zen in America, you can see many places where this sort of attitude has led to tremendously harmful behavior on the part of teachers.  But actually, this is an old problem.  There's a koan in the thirteenth century collection Mumonkan that addresses this:  Whenever Master Hyakujo would give a talk, an old man would sit with the monks to listen.  One day Hyakujo asked him, "Who are you?"  The man replied, "Many lifetimes ago, I was the head of this monastery and someone asked me 'Does an enlightened person also fall into causation or not?'."  In other words, does an enlightened person need to follow the precepts?  "I replied 'He does not' and was reborn a fox for five hundred years.  Please teach me my mistake.  Does an enlightened person fall into causation or not?"  Master Hyakujo replied, "He does not ignore causation."

It's not that in practice we somehow miraculously reach a state where the precepts no longer apply, where cause and effect no longer apply, but that what we call the precepts begin to function ever more organically in our lives.  At any rate, without the sort of ethical standards spelled out in the precepts, sitting in Zen meditation is a mannequin's practice -- a fancy display of robes, perhaps.  It might look pretty, but it's hollow.  And conversely, formal practices like daily prostrations and sitting uphold and give clarity to the precepts.

The precepts that we take at Still Point are:

Five Traditional Precepts:

1. Do not harm but cherish all life.
2. Do not take what is not given but respect the things of others.
3. Do not engage in sexual promiscuity but practice purity of mind and self-restraint.
4. Do not lie but speak the truth.
5. Do not partake in the production and transactions of firearms and chemical poisons that are injurious to public health and safety nor of drugs and liquors that confuse and weaken the mind.

Three Optional Contemporary Precepts:

6. Do not waste but conserve energy and natural resources.
7. Do not harbor enmity against the wrongs of others but promote peace and justice through non-violent means.
8. Do not cling to things that belong to you but practice generosity and the joy of sharing.

I remember when I first heard of the precepts at the Ann Arbor temple, I thought, "The last thing I'm here to do is sign up for more rules, and that's all there is to it."  So although I had no intention of going through with the whole precept-taking ceremony, I was also curious enough to do the preliminary practices like prostrations and to sort of quietly squat in the meetings that were held in the weeks prior to the ceremony.  In these meetings, a precept is taken up to be practiced in very concrete ways during the week.  And then on Sunday, folks taking the precepts gather together to discuss their insights from the previous week.  As I began working with them, I noticed that I started to feel lighter, actually more free.  By the time I took them at the ceremony in Chicago, I felt as though a large burden had been lifted from my shoulders:  very apparently, the burden of being so tightly bound to my preferences. 

And although we tend to notice the "do not" aspect of them, the way that P'arang's teacher, Ven. Samu Sunim, has worded them is really beautiful in that each one contains very positive practices.  "Cherish all life."  "Respect the things of others."  And as we work with them, we see that although they're very straightforward and simple, there's really no end to their subtlety and depth.  "Do not harm but cherish all life" means, of course, don't kill.  But what does it mean to cherish all life?  How do I cherish people with different views than mine?  Do I even try?  How do I respect the things of others when those things don't agree at all with my views of how one should be in the world?

For his sixtieth birthday, Zen Master Seung Sahn's friends and students compiled a book called "Only DOing it for Sixty Years."  In it, a fellow named Richard Stoll recalls a discussion he had with Seung Sahn, whom he calls simply "Soen Sa Nim," or "Zen Master":

One day I went to Soen Sa Nim's room to talk.  I said, "Soen Sa Nim, you teach a lot about "True Self."  Please show me your "True Self."

Soen Sa Nim said, "What do you want?"

I said, "Show me your True Self."

Soen Sa Nim said, "What do you want?"

I said, "Show me your True Self."

Soen Sa Nim said, "You don't understand me asking you, 'What do you want?'  That is my True Self."

I said, "If your body dies in a moment, then how will you answer me?"

Soen Sa Nim said, "I will answer you when my body dies, if you know how to ask me.  Do you know how to ask me?"

I was stuck and said, "No I don't know."

Soen Sa Nim said, "Ask the sky, rivers and trees.  They all answer for me.  Same answer."

To practice the precepts is to answer freely moment-to-moment, like the sky, rivers and trees, not so entirely bound by this series of moods called "Koho" that I'm always chasing better food or "enlightenment" or any of an endless list of prizes that only ever exist as ideas in my head.